Trump’s Immigration Policies Unify White Republicans
Donald Trump’s ongoing purge of the Department of Homeland Security marks another milestone in his transformation of the GOP into an exclusionary party defined by its hostility to immigration in particular and demographic change in general.
Trump’s move to install more hard-liners at DHS—headlined by his dismissal of Secretary Kirstjen Nielsen and the withdrawal of his nominee to head Immigration and Customs Enforcement in favor of “tougher” leaders—signals his determination to implement more draconian responses to the Central American migrants seeking asylum at the U.S.-Mexico border. While some congressional Republicans have raised alarms about the magnitude of the turnover, hardly any have publicly complained about the direction of Trump’s policy.
Some GOP lawmakers still resist the most militant expressions of Trump’s restrictionist inclinations—several balked at his recent suggestion that he would close the U.S.-Mexico border, for example. But the muted response to Trump’s DHS purge testifies to the decline of any coherent, structured resistance within the party to his overall course
